(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a shock absorbing structure for a vehicle, and particularly to a shock absorbing structure for a vehicle capable of being advantageously arranged in an installation space between an interior components of the vehicle and a structural component of the vehicle body.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Generally, a vehicle such as an automobile often has a shock absorbing structure fitted within an installation space between an interior component, such as a ceiling lining, a pillar garnish, a roof side rail, an instrument panel, a console box, etc., which has a high possibility of coming into contact with a vehicle occupant at a time of a collision accident, and a body structural component such as various panels constituting part of a body that are positioned at an opposite side (outer side) to the interior component side of a vehicle compartment, and in this way an impact imparted to the vehicle occupant is alleviated when the interior component contacts the vehicle occupant at the time of the collision accident, for thereby protecting the vehicle occupant.
However, many of this type of vehicle shock absorbing structures are conventionally arranged so as to fill an installation space by being designed in a shape that corresponds to the installation space between the interior component and the body structural component. As a result of this, there is no gap between the shock absorbing structure and the interior component and/or the body structural component. This arrangement prevents an occurrence of an abnormal noise caused by a contact of the shock absorbing structure with the interior component or the body structural component because of rattling caused by a vibration at a time the vehicle is traveling, for example. This arrangement also prevents the interior component from being easily dented at a time the interior component is pressed, which would otherwise give a poor or cheap impression contrary to a feeling of high quality.
Also, the shape of the installation space for the shock absorbing structure between the interior component and the body structural component is generally different for each type of vehicle, which means that with this type of conventional shock absorbing structure the overall shape should match the shape of the respective installation space, and should be designed specifically for each type of vehicle.
For this reason, at the design stage of this type of conventional shock absorbing structure, there was required an additional work to separately confirm whether or not a sufficient shock absorbing performance was exhibited by the shock absorbing structure that was designed in the shape corresponding to the installation space, which complicated the design of the shock absorbing structure and was a major cause of significantly lowering a productivity. Furthermore, with the conventional shock absorbing structure, since it is shaped in accordance with the installation space, when the installation space is comparatively large it is impossible to prevent the overall size being large. Accordingly, when the shock absorbing structure is formed by die molding using a synthetic resin material, for example, there is caused a problem that the die is increased in size, and as a result of that the manufacturing cost of the die, and also the manufacturing cost of the shock absorbing structure, rise steeply.
Under these circumstances, the inventor of the present invention proposed the shock absorbing structure for a vehicle that solves all of the various problems described above at one time, in JP-A-2004-189120. This shock absorbing structure for a vehicle has shock absorbing members that form a gap between the interior component and the body structural component, and are capable of being arranged in any of installation spaces that have different shapes from each other, and the shock absorbing structure has a spacer member, corresponding to at least a part of the gap formed between the interior component and the body structural component, attached to the shock absorbing members.
In this type of shock absorbing structure, a single general purpose member is used as the shock absorbing member regardless of the shape of an installation space in which the shock absorbing structure is fitted is changed, and as a result, even if the type of vehicle into which the structure is to be fitted changes, a stable shock absorbing performance is ensured without any troublesome design changes relating to shock absorbing characteristics. Also, the gap formed inside the installation space between the interior component and the shock absorbing member can be advantageously eliminated or made as small as possible by using the spacer member, which means that various drawbacks due to the existence of this type of gap are effectively resolved.
In this type of conventional shock absorbing structure, the spacer member is attached to the shock absorbing members via specified attachment parts. Therefore, in the case where each of the attachment parts for the spacer member provided on the shock absorbing member has an angular corner section and/or a thick-walled section, as described in JP-A-2004-189120, for example, if the corner section is large, or the thick-walled section is extremely thick, rigidity of the shock absorbing member is excessive and the shock absorbing stroke will be reduced, and as a result there is an anxiety that attainment of sufficient shock absorbing performance will be difficult. Accordingly, the conventional shock absorbing structure for a vehicle leaves room for further improvement in this respect.